The Prodigal Village: A Christmas Tale

by Irving Bacheller

The community of Bingville was noted for its simplicity and good sense. Servants were unknown in this village of three thousand people. It had lawyers and doctors and professors and merchants—some of whom were deservedly well known—and J. Patterson Bing, the owner of the pulp mill, celebrated for his riches; but one could almost say that its most sought for and popular folk were its hired girls. They were few and sniffy. They exercised care and discretion in the choice of their employers. They regulated the diet of the said employers and the frequency and quality of their entertainments. If it could be said that there was an aristocracy in the place they were it. First, among the Who's Who of Bingville, were the Gilligan sisters who worked in the big brick house of Judge Crooker; another was Mrs. Pat Collins, seventy-two years of age, who presided in the kitchen of the Reverend Otis Singleton; the two others were Susan Crowder, a woman of sixty, and a red-headed girl with one eye, of the name of Featherstraw, both of whom served the opulent Bings. Some of these hired girls ate with the family—save on special occasions when city folk were present. Mrs. Collins and the Gilligans seemed to enjoy this privilege but Susan Crowder, having had an ancestor who had fought in the Revolutionary War, couldn't stand it, and Martha Featherstraw preferred to eat in the kitchen. Indeed there was some warrant for this remarkable situation. The Gilligan sisters had a brother who was a Magistrate in a large city and Mrs. Collins had a son who was a successful and popular butcher in the growing city of Hazelmead.

That part of the village known as Irishtown and a settlement of Poles and Italians furnished the man help in the mill, and its sons were also seen more or less in the fields and gardens. Ambition and Education had been working in the minds of the young in and about Bingville for two generations. The sons and daughters of farmers and ditch-diggers had read Virgil and Horace and plodded into the mysteries of higher mathematics. The best of them had gone into learned professions; others had enlisted in the business of great cities; still others had gone in for teaching or stenography.

Their success had wrought a curious devastation in the village and countryside. The young moved out heading for the paths of glory. Many a sturdy, stupid person who might have made an excellent plumber, or carpenter, or farmer, or cook, armed with a university degree and a sense of superiority, had gone forth in quest of fame and fortune prepared for nothing in particular and achieving firm possession of it. Somehow the elective system had enabled them "to get by" in a state of mind that resembled the Mojave Desert. If they did not care for Latin or mathematics they could take a course in Hierology or in The Taming of the Wild Chickadee or in some such easy skating. Bingville was like many places. The young had fled from the irksome tasks which had roughened the hands and bent the backs of their parents. That, briefly, accounts for the fewness and the sniffiness above referred to.

Early in 1917, the village was shaken by alarming and astonishing news. True, the sinking of the Lusitania and our own enlistment in the World War and the German successes on the Russian frontier had, in a way, prepared the heart and intellect of Bingville for shocking events. Still, these disasters had been remote. The fact that the Gilligan sisters had left the Crookers and accepted an offer of one hundred and fifty dollars a month from the wealthy Nixons of Hazelmead was an event close to the footlights, so to speak. It caused the news of battles to take its rightful place in the distant background. Men talked of this event in stores and on street corners; it was the subject of conversation in sewing circles and the Philomathian Literary Club. That day, the Bings whispered about it at the dinner table between courses until Susan Crowder sent in a summons by Martha Featherstraw with the apple pie. She would be glad to see Mrs. J. Patterson Bing in the kitchen immediately after dinner. There was a moment of silence in the midst of which Mr. Bing winked knowingly at his wife, who turned pale as she put down her pie fork with a look of determination and rose and went into the kitchen. Mrs. Crowder regretted that she and Martha would have to look for another family unless their wages were raised from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a month.

"But, Susan, we all made an agreement for a year," said Mrs. Bing.

Mrs. Crowder was sorry but she and Martha could not make out on the wages they were getting—everything cost so much. If Mary Gilligan, who couldn't cook, was worth a hundred dollars a month Mrs. Crowder considered herself cheap at twice that figure.

Mrs. Bing, in her anger, was inclined to revolt, but Mr. Bing settled the matter by submitting to the tyranny of Susan. With Phyllis and three of her young friends coming from school and a party in prospect, there was nothing else to do.

Maggie Collins, who was too old and too firmly rooted in the village to leave it, was satisfied with a raise of ten dollars a month. Even then she received a third of the minister's salary. "His wife being a swell leddy who had no time for wurruk, sure the boy was no sooner married than he yelled for help," as Maggie was wont to say.

All this had a decided effect on the economic life of the village. Indeed, Hiram Blenkinsop, the village drunkard, who attended to the lawns and gardens for a number of people, demanded an increase of a dollar a day in his wages on account of the high cost of living, although one would say that its effect upon him could not have been serious. For years the historic figure of Blenkinsop had been the destination and repository of the cast-off clothing and the worn and shapeless shoes of the leading citizens. For a decade, the venerable derby hat, which once belonged to Judge Crooker, had survived all the incidents of his adventurous career. He was, indeed, as replete with suggestive memories as the graveyard to which he was wont to repair for rest and recuperation in summer weather. There, in the shade of a locust tree hard by the wall, he was often discovered with his faithful dog Christmas—a yellow, mongrel, good-natured cur—lying beside him, and the historic derby hat in his hand. He had a persevering pride in that hat. Mr. Blenkinsop showed a surprising and commendable industry under the stimulation of increased pay. He worked hard for a month, then celebrated his prosperity with a night of such noisy, riotous joy that he landed in the lockup with a black eye and a broken nose and an empty pocket. As usual, the dog Christmas went with him.

When there was a loud yell in the streets at night Judge Crooker used to say, "It's Hiram again! The poor fellow is out a-Hiraming."